E-scooter related injuries: Using natural language processing to rapidly search 36 million medical notes

Abstract

Background Shareable e-scooters have become popular, but injuries to riders and bystanders have not been well characterized. The goal of this study was to describe e-scooter injuries and estimate the rate of injury per e-scooter trip. Methods and findings Retrospective review of patients presenting to 180 clinics and 2 hospitals in greater Los Angeles between January 1, 2014 and May 14, 2020. Injuries were identified using a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm not previously used to identify injuries, tallied, and described along with required healthcare resources. We combine these tallies with municipal data on scooter use to report a monthly utilization-corrected rate of e-scooter injuries. We searched 36 million clinical notes. Our NLP algorithm correctly classified 92% of notes in the testing set compared with the gold standard of investigator review. In total, we identified 1,354 people injured by e-scooters; 30% were seen in more than one clinical setting (e.g., emergency department and a follow-up outpatient visit), 29% required advanced imaging, 6% required inpatient admission, and 2 died. We estimate 115 injuries per million e-scooter trips were treated in our health system. Conclusions Our observed e-scooter injury rate is likely an underestimate, but is similar to that previously reported for motorcycles. However, the comparative severity of injuries is unknown. Our methodology may prove useful to study other clinical conditions not identifiable by existing diagnostic systems.

Electric scooter-related triple cervical artery dissection

“…Electric scooters are an increasingly common mode of transport, particularly in the urban setting, and are associated with increased risk of high energy trauma [ 1 , 2 ]. Injury rates of between 115 and 250 per million trips and fatality rates of 19 per million trips have been described [ 3 , 4 ]. The most common associated injuries are upper extremity (54%), lower extremity (47%) and head and neck (43%) [4] .…”

“…Injury rates of between 115 and 250 per million trips and fatality rates of 19 per million trips have been described [ 3 , 4 ]. The most common associated injuries are upper extremity (54%), lower extremity (47%) and head and neck (43%) [4] .…”

E-scooter riders and pedestrians: Attitudes and interactions in five countries

“…Aizpuru et al found that the change in the incidence of e-scooter injuries in the USA was not significant between 2013 and 2017 [ 13 ]. Ioannides et al estimated that 115 injuries per million e-scooter trips were treated in 180 clinics and two hospitals in Los Angeles in 2014–2020 [ 14 ]. On the other hand, recent studies noted that after the launch of shared e-scooters there was a dramatic increase in e-scooter injuries – a 625% increase in Salt Lake City when comparing a control period in 2017 (i.e., before shared e-scooter programs were launched) [ 15 ] with a test period in 2018 (i.e,.…”

Comparison of Injuries Associated With Electric Scooters, Motorbikes, and Bicycles in France, 2019-2022

“…This underestimation of e-scooter RTCs was reported recently in an original study involving natural language processing conducted in Los Angeles. 25 Third, the TraumaBase register does not collect some important information, such as vehicle speed, crash cause and description, socioeconomic status of the user, health status at the time of discharge (including the place of discharge and the autonomy), or long-term health consequences.…”